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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 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 voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist