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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions 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 other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast 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 anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist