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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, 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 little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight 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 legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer