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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove 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 House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist