Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Fire with Similar Measures?

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 crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people 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 presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own 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 antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer