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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 tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

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 in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer