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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 legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation 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 the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist