Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more 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 nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer