🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer