🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear 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, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial 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 simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, 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 issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense 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 steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe 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 something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist