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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 legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up 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 in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level 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. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer