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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer