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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ 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 more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist