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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort 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, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer