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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle 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 lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist