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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion 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 considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist