Ought California Voters Vote to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer