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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 determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps 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; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel 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