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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state 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 also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer