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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist