🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical 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 without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – 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 mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new 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 time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist