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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue 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?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 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 next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new 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 government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer