🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting 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 additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist