🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation 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, desire and hope for – Prop 50 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 constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist