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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, 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 chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer