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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove 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 House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer