Ought California Voters Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat Texas'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 declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist