Should California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Fight the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting 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 budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer