🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move 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 possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm 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 necessary. 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 does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer