🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist