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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard 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 the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave 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, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – 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 politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer