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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal 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 dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries 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 significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives 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 made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates 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