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

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist