🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term 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 redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer