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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist