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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats 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, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. 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 be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US 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 – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer