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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 initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize 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 merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist