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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled 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 genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer