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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering 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 after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer