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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats 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, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something 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 fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist