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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country 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 – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist