Ought California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, 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 appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish 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 Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist