🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist