🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer