Should Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate 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 Guardian US writer