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What, precisely, 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 vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP 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 the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer