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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave 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 incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored 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 impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates 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