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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force 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 columnist