🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist