Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality 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 undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined 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 mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist