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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist