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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

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 voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans 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 the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area 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 democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is 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 power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast 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 anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist