🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 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 the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing 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 additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer