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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist