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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members 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 era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer