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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, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer