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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right 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 Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist