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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats 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 critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist