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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication 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 won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist