Should California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal 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 question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, 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 targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer