Ought Californians Vote to Redistrict and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Similar Measures?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

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 allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm 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. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer