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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may 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 special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee 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 objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch 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 Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer