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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats 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 other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist