Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. 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 operating smoothly.

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance 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 measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries 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 second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist