🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, 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 claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘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 more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats 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, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist