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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer