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

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist