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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: 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 second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist