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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing 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 made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist