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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five 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 Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist