Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?
What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.
The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist 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 more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)
The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting 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 accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.
If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.
The columnist is a Guardian US columnist
