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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer