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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. 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 the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize 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 merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer