🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, 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 operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer