Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots 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 power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, 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 better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict 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 once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer