Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.
And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)
The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.
If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US writer
