Ought California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent 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 mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument 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 worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist