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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle 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, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle 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