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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 vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world 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 manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer