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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer