Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. 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 does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist