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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative 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, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, 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 redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once 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 reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates 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 writer