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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – 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 people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast 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 anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist