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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 authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions 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 Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer