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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer