🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may 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 additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist