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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large 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 closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer