Ought California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.
And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party 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 response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)
The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn 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 means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.
The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after 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, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel 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
