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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made 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, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist