🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five 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 the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much 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 won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members 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 time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer