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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large 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 Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer