🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions 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 second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is 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 lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer