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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system 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 argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist