Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, 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 Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)
The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.
The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.
If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
The columnist is a news outlet columnist
