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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the 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 issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy 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 democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer