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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, 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 televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist