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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more 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 leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist