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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; 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 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, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist