Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.
The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.
And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable 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 the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result 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 influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.
If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer