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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party 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 response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer