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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference 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 become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer