🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle 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