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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats 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 reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen 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 won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer