What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.
And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?
In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)
The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.
It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.
The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.
If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.
The columnist is a news outlet columnist
Elara Vance is a seasoned sports analyst with over a decade of experience in betting strategies and statistical analysis.
