Should Californians Vote to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, 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-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer