🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist