Should California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic 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 far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise 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