Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire 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 congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.
And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 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 the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines 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 at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)
The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.
It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP 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 GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.
The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate 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 conservative would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US columnist
