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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting 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 omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power 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 Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: 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 means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, 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 part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force 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 columnist