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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, 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 issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional 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 belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist