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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district 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 truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct 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.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist