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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical 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, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer