Ought Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort 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 reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist