Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, 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 maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist