🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, 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 thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members 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 news outlet writer