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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist