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

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering 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 argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures 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 change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence 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 GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer