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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps 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 truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist