Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds 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 Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern 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 measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer