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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer