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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 authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply 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 shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry 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 state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn 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, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force 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