Ought California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, 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 kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer