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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication 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 seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning 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 argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist