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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer