Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Fire with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down 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 issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist