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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer