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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer