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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats 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 objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist