Should Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, 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 crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the 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 somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer