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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready 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, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist