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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those 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 not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer