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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer