🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering 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 required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist