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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, 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 redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense 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, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist