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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York 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 longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer