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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. 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 Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five 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 power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer