🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer