Ought California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.
And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?
How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 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 upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)
The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US columnist
