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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better 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 circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. 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 the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. 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 authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force 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 writer