Should California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions 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, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist