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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may 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 more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other 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 distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist