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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer