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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate 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 power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates 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