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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist