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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats 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 other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist