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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered 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 additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological 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 truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist