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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 tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal 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 control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided 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 clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for 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, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer