Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?
What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.
And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?
How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions 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 the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy 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 spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist
