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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable 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 lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer