🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, 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 recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings 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.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer