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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw 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 years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel 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 writer