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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian 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 Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic 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 retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, 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 desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist