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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, 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 anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist