🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist