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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled 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 closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: 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 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 healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer