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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic 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 motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era 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 new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist