Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?
How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)
The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps 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 vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready 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 substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.
If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates 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 news outlet writer
