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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed 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 question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more 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 Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer