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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 power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created 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 democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist