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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle 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