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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’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 seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails 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 measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer