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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist