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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist