Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist