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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process 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 first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer