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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more 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 Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer