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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, 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 measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates 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