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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created 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 implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process 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 argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: 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, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer