Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.
And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?
How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats 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 objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.
If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US writer
