Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist