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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans 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 Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, 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 alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer