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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain 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 keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist