🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, 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 situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members 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 time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions 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.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer