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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer