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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions 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 other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power 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 more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist