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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: 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 second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist