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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area 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 representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era 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 find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist