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

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal 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, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer