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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 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 upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer