Should California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire 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 seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer