Ought Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.
And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate 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 ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)
The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.
The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for 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, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.
If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
