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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, 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 manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members 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