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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer