Should Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now 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 increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist