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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. 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 setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer