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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

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 approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation 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 California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire 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 disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer