🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind 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 situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable 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. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer