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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist