Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?
How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)
The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, 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 the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent 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 a long time.
The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.
If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer
