Ought Californians Vote to Redraw District Lines and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Similar Measures?

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

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those 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. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. 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 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer