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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri 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 respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level 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 representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer