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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky 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, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful 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, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist