🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional 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 actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist