🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored 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 grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist