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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled 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, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist