Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area 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 genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer