🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive 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 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 anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: 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 nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist