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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates 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 writer