🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people 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 executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner 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 power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer