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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 power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to 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 the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe 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 something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer