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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation 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, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good 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 negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much 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 won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government 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 take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist