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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting 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 long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats 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 a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel 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 columnist