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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s 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 California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist