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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country 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, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer