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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, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district 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 truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer