🔗 Share this article

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

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills 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 increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the 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 issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices 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 happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new 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 examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist