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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the 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 issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern 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 more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, 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 demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist