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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish 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, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors 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 writer