Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates 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 Guardian US writer