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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist