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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, 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 redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn 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 truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices 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 party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer