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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured 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 blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created 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, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist