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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky 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 his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer