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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs 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 somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance 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 explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee 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 years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer