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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion 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 first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer