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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw 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 clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn 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 representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee 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 a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist