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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 determine. 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 time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist