Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills 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, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist