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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat 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 Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer