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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, 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 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist