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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge 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 shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent 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 objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer