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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. 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 practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist