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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist