Ought California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed
And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)
The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.
The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe 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
