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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts 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 reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer