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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions 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 columnist