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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist