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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional 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 liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required 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 reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist