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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds 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 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist