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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, 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 no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad 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 reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist