Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?
What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, 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 stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal 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 issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?
How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail
And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)
The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer
