Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, 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 legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined 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 the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer