🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge 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 Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen 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 opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist