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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist