Should California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer