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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire 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 world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power 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 body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist