Ought California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?
How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)
The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.
It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.
The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.
If the legislative branch does not 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 the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
