🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, 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 California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist