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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, 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 targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct 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 columnist