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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. 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 turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California 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 five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer