🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled 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 narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist