Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.
And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.
It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.
If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist
