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 can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.
The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.
And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?
How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)
The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address 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 accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic 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 institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US writer