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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory 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 proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer