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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, 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 notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans 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, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors 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