I was in Salt Lake City for a few days recently, and one thing that came up a few times was the effort by Republican lawmakers to do away with some of the state’s anti-gerrymandering protections and push to redraw lines to hang onto the 4-0 congressional majority the GOP already holds in the state, joining a nationwide effort spurred by Trump. The Salt Lake metro area, despite sitting in a deeply conservative state, is relatively blue, and some locals who live elsewhere complained to me that their own small cities and towns would effectively be split up among multiple districts, leaving their residents without clear representation.
Texas Republicans already redrew their maps to give themselves another five safe seats, and states like Missouri and North Carolina are joining in. The latter is one of the nation’s most purple states, with a roughly 50-50 split between Republican and Democratic voters. It already has a heavily gerrymandered map, with Republicans holding a 10 to 4 margin in the congressional delegation, but the GOP is seeking to squeeze out yet another strong R seat. Just yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving Louisiana’s efforts to gut one of the remaining pillars of the Voting Rights Act. If Louisiana wins, it would become easier for states to shut minority candidates out of office, a move that would build on previous decisions by the Court narrowing the scope of the Act and allowing more partisan districting.
Beyond being pretty plainly antidemocratic, these efforts can have some clear practical implications as the makeup of Congress after next year’s elections could well determine whether American democracy survives. The Republicans’ already razor-thin majority seems imperiled by a pretty widespread souring of public sentiment on Trump, and Democrats have already been overperforming in special elections in advance of the big midterm.
I think the odds are good that Democrats might end up with an actionable majority in the House and maybe even the Senate next year, if only they can harness enough energy to overcome steep institutional barriers. Put another way, Democrats are effectively forced to win big voter majorities just to reach electoral parity with Republicans, but the trends we’re seeing put them in a position of conceivably reaching this level and gaining enough power to derail some of Trump’s more authoritarian efforts.
So far during Trump’s term, Congress has been so subservient that you would be forgiven for forgetting that it does technically possess the power to curb much of what he’s doing. Let’s look at just tariffs and impoundment, two of Trump’s signature policy prescriptions. As you might know, this entire chaotic imposition of tariffs (and their rollback, and re-imposition, and rollback, and expansion) that has sent shockwaves through the economy and practically torpedoed certain industries is not technically a power that the executive possesses. Congress is the body that has the power to levy tariffs, having delegated to the president only the power to take certain economic actions during certain emergencies.
The law that Trump is citing as the basis of his plan does not even include the word “tariff.” That’s why his tariffs have lost twice already in court, once in a federal district court and once in the Court of International Trade. Many people haven’t grasped this because it turns out that many people had no idea what a tariff was in the first place. But they are just new taxes, and the average person I think does understand that presidents cannot simply rewrite the tax code on their own.
On the other side of the balance sheet are government expenditures, and you probably heard in your schooling that one of Congress’ most significant powers is the so-called power of the purse, i.e., the ability to raise revenues via taxation and other means and then direct that spending through federal budgets and other legislation.
Here, too, Trump has helped himself to what is clearly a congressional power, refusing to spend money that Congress has already appropriated and redirecting some to other purposes. What would ordinarily be seen as a crisis for the separation of powers has not gotten nearly as much attention as Trump’s attempts to defy the federal judiciary. That’s because, while the courts have moved to some extent to safeguard their power, the GOP congressional leadership has for the most part stood back as Trump has stripped them of core functions. A Congress that actually insisted on maintaining its own authority and independence could really gum up the works here. It could not only actively prevent Trump’s efforts to siphon away their power, but could counter other abuses — clawing back, for example, some of the immense funding for Trump priorities like immigration enforcement, and codifying some ethical and professional guidelines that would trip up what has been a very corrupt administration.
Congress can also do a lot more than pass legislation. Congressional committees can drag executive officials to oversight hearings where they are expected to answer questions under oath, which does actually still mean something even in an era when officials feel that they have the ability to reflexively lie about everything all the time. You might have heard that former FBI Director James Comey was recently indicted, though perhaps not what he was indicted for, because nobody really cares about that, understanding it to be a pretext for Trump to go after a political enemy. Technically, though, his criminal offense was lying to Congress, something MAGA is briefly pretending to care about.
A Democratic Congress, though, could easily issue subpoenas and eventually refer Trump officials for investigation for the same thing. It could compel document releases and pass legislation responsive to Trump’s whack-a-mole approach to authoritarian expansion. Then, there are the bigger-ticket items, among them going nuclear on the judiciary: court reform, including adding federal circuits and the potential for actually expanding the Supreme Court, which has been a reliable partner in expanding Trump’s power.
I’m not certain that there’s necessarily appetite right now for something like that among the median Democratic elected official, but things are moving rapidly, and it’s my sense that the tide is finally shifting away from a presumption of regularity and normalcy. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, one of the handful of nationally prominent Democratic leaders who seem to grasp the severity of our contemporary moment, the other day floated the possibility of having state authorities prosecute ICE agents who exceed the bounds of the law, something people like me have been discussing as a necessary corrective for months. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, an oysterman who’s running in the primary to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins — one of the Democrats’ main targets for a Senate turnover — recently responded to an audience question by similarly pledging to drag ICE leaders before the Senate and force them to answer for their conduct.
I think the proliferating images of federal forces going into Democratic cities like Portland and engaging in openly autocratic actions, like mass arrests and violent responses to protests, are quickly building support for more aggressive action from Dem leaders. For now, this is not going to run through a theoretical next Democratic president. It’s going to run through Congress, if Democrats can take either or both chambers. So in terms of the whole redistricting fight, it’s important to think about it not just in terms of an attack on democratic representation, but a limitation on what’s possible in countering specific authoritarian power grabs.
