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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide 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 the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action 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 eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast 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 columnist