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

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist