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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist