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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial 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 shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote 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 convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer