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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed 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 don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: 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 draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim 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 Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist