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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined 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 Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication 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 won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer