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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills 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 administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed 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 redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep 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 declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer