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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power 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; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly 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 federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: 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 genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. 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 institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer