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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. 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 maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist