🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference 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 turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist