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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once 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 Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer