Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?
What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?
How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)
The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area 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 representative: 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 primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.
If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US writer
