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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations 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 retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer