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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear 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 keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far 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 won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist