Should California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to 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 clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing 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 objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer