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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist