🔗 Share this article

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

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era 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 sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer