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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer