Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)
The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country 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 – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer