🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – 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 resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable 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 after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer