🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose 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 way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist