Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering 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 after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist