Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?
In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.
The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
The columnist is a news outlet writer
