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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal 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 rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: 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 Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country 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, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist