Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government 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 resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created 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 means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication 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 fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer