🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, 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 better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist