Should California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)
The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, 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 own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing 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 tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad 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 the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful 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, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.
If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer
