🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge 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 questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist