Ought Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning 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 initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign 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 successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist