Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.
And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?
How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)
The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.
It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.
The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront 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 better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.
If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist
