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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area 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 truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer