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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal 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 question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State 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 bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions 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 writer