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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer