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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ 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 additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control 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 countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer