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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted 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 reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist