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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation 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 California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures 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 positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication 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 won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer