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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues 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 institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California 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 provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions 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 change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist