Ought California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist