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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 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 special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control 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-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide 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 the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: 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 engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; 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 after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes 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 broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer