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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight 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 practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer