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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek 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’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer