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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology 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 budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist