Should Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right 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 military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.
And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?
How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.
It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.
If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains 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 authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US columnist
