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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist