Should Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates 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 news outlet columnist