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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 tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist