Should California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering 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 closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist