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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer