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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions 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 redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer