🔗 Share this article

What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result 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 influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, 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 targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist