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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, 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 first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer