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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel 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 writer