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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 unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing 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 substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer