Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer