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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist