What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?
How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)
The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.
It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.
The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.
If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
