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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, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar 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 example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist