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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter 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 antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist