🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct 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 aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist