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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, 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 members of his close advisors 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