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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn 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 representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure 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 alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct 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 columnist