🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist