🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move 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 essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer