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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly 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 representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, 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.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist