Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist