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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats 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 compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer