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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 determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term 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 years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. 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 does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members 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 columnist