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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the 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 control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way 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 opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer