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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer