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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part 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 give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer