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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens 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 maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer