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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch 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 mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split 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 intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps 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 years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe 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 more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist