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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee 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 other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different 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 Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist