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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize 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 merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic 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 world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer