🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs 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 response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; 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 battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer