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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office 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 asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend 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 shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of 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 approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen 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 opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer