Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal 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 Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?
How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)
The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control 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 required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.
If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations 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 Republican would do.
The columnist is a news outlet writer
