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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist 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 captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant 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 own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer