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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, 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 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 measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist