Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.
And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.
The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.
If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist
