Should Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members 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