🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans 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 likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist