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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer