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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer