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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, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate 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.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist