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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved 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 investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist