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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant 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 objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled 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 incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist