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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer