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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist