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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer