Should Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on 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 largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist