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

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, 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 political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle 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 lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist