🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much 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 successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist