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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence 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 limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington 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 utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist