Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government 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 resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)
The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.
The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.
If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings 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.
The columnist is a Guardian US writer
