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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly 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 the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs 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 own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer