🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing 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 leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, 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 California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after 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 does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution 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 not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer