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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary 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 the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer