🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, 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 question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains 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 significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer