Ought California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist