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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing 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 additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer