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What, precisely, 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 vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. 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 not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist