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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer