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

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist