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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer