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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist