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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer