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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme 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 sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. 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 not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause 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 once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist