Ought Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer