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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 initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action 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 chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist