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

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled 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 grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist