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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire 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 Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist