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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 tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates 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 writer