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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington 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 politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors 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