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 power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.
And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)
The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer