Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually 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 government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum 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 captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer