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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist