Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics 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 determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled 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 created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is 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 the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer