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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves 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 attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist