Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)
The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.
The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.
If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.
The columnist is a news outlet columnist
