Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist