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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five 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 the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist