🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist