Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Aggressive Tactics with Fire?

What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist