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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate 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 as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist