Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer