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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, 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 too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner 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, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront 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 true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist