Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Fight the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital 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 stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist