Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?
What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.
And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)
The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.
If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic 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 time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
