🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar 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 example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist