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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather 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 could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, 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 better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; 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 mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist