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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 turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps 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 the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created 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 representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors 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