🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern 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 measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: 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 critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, 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 thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist