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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have 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 asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government 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 issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views 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 primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made 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 required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer