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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist