Let’s roll by Barry Rosenbaum

The country needs to wake up to the reality that we are rapidly moving towards full-fledged despotism. The pace is speeding up, with daily unprecedented actions and decrees directly aimed at our democratic institutions and principles. Now, Trump is asking red states to prematurely redraw congressional districting maps to safeguard a Republican majority in the House. Unlike the 2020 election, where the Georgia secretary of state refused to find Trump “just 11,780 votes”, the Texas governor and his cohorts are not hesitating to aid Trump’s effort to destroy democracy. Others are sure to follow.

Finally, Democrats’ seeming inability to meet the moment with strength and inspirational political force appears to have broken. Witness the actions of the Democrats in the Texas State House, in defying the Republican leadership, including Representative Nicole Collier sleeping on the House floor for two nights because she refused to sign a document agreeing to being assigned a “police escort.”

No action, however, may prove to have more lasting impact than Governor Newsom’s and the California state legislature’s decision to meet fire with fire.

California typically redistricts every ten years through an independent, nonpartisan commission. California Proposition 50, the “Election Rigging Response Act,” would temporarily alter that by allowing the state, through its voters, to adopt new maps favorable to Democrats for the next three Congressional cycles. After that, the redistricting process would return to the independent commission. Maybe by then the nation will have returned to its senses.

Fervent opposition to this measure has already risen, with millions of dollars sure to be spent. The MAGA uproar is entirely expected. Others are more surprising. The President of the League of Women Voters of California (LWV) expressed her opposition to Newsom’s efforts, arguing that the “calls for mid-decade redistricting threaten to unravel” California Proposition 11, which created the independent commission in 2008. Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

What, other than the shell of a democratic process, will remain if Trump corruptly retains control of the House and the Senate? Arguments of equivalency—“politicians on both sides of the political divide are trying to use mid-cycle redistricting to undermine our democracy”—make me want to scream! As Heather Cox Richardson said in her recent piece on the history of “Movement Conservatism,” this is a “story about how the Republicans came to put party over country and now, how they have put power over everything.”

It is hard to fathom why organizations and individuals who one would expect to be natural allies in this battle (e.g., LWV, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) fail to understand the moment at hand. Of course, many organizations do get it. Common Cause, a long-time supporter of nonpartisan redistricting, put out this statement:

Common Cause will not pre-emptively oppose mid-decade redistricting in California. President Trump and Republican leaders in states like Texas are doing all they can to prevent the people from having a say in our future – enabling them to concentrate power as they cut our healthcare, kidnap our neighbors, and occupy our cities. 

We must focus our limited resources on that larger threat. We won’t call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarianism – or let our country’s balance of power be decided not by the voters, but by the will of one political party. (emphasis in the original)

The knee-jerk opposition to Proposition 50 also reflects an unwillingness to hear what Newsom said—he would not pursue this action if the Texas Republicans stopped their efforts. It also ignores the process he has chosen to utilize— redistricting would only occur after a vote of the people. The Texas Republicans moved full steam ahead without any consideration of placing the measure before the Texas electorate.

The period that we are living through is unrecognizable from any that I have experienced during my sixty-six years. In another recent presentation, Heather Cox Richardson aptly summed up where we are:

 [W]e are in the process of developing two storylines about what the United States of America is, and both of them are deeply rooted in our history. One is the one that the MAGA Republicans, led by Donald Trump, embrace, and that is the idea that some people are better than others and have the right to rule… that has been part of our founding story since the first Europeans first set foot on North America… But so too is the throughline that says, “No, in fact, we are all created equal and have an equal right to be treated equally before the law, to have a say in our government, and to have equal access to resources.” As that second storyline is really starting to develop a narrative now, that first storyline, which is what the MAGA Republicans have really pushed, is starting to falter. And there’s real fear and real anger on their part that they’re going to lose out.

President Biden long recognized that we are in a battle for the soul of this country. Sometimes, when you are in a battle with stakes such as these, you must meet the opponent on their chosen field. Redistricting is one of those fields.

We are in a power play with dire consequences—liberty and justice for all or Christian nationalism. We cannot sit idly by resting on abstract principles garnered from a time far removed from today’s reality. As Newsom said in directly addressing Trump on this issue: “You have poked the bear, and we will punch back.” It is time to roll!!