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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 power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 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 voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer