Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer