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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended 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 additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome 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 influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital 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 government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer