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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define 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 initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats 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 objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country 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 – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist