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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. 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 government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created 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 representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist