Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?
What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, 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 Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?
How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)
The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: 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 engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.
The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.
If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.
The columnist is a news outlet columnist
