Should Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.
And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?
In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)
The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.
The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.
If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer
