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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response 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 congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process 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 critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist