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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer