Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?
How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)
The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.
The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.
If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US writer
