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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions 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 retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate 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 become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something 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 lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist