Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize 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 argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term 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 strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist