🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power 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 funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states 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 long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy 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 first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer