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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial 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 strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist