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

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right 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, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist