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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish 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 the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer