Should Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist