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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right 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 his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives 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 power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer