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

What, exactly, is the purpose 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 legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer