🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines 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 bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist