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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 determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state 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 following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force 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