🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist