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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter 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 behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist