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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer