Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House 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 currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond 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 have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, 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 better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist