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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer