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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning 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 initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: 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 engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist