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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation 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 emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist