🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist