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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, 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 humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member 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 give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer