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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 vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 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 in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, 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 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 world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once 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 does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist