Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, 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 valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined 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 opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer