🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose 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 outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, 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 define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical 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 steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready 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, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist