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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening 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 rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP 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 steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after 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 fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, 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.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist