Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share 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 congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive 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 complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist