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

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist