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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split 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 response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic 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 truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist