🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these 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 not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist