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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer