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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer