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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, 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 recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal 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 the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality 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 undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist