Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal 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 issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’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 attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations 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 writer