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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned 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 Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address 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 true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates 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 writer