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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates 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