Should Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, 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 himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge 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 critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country 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, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist