🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help 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 more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; 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 battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist