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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance 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 explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer