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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created 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, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, 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 manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members 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