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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs 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 seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’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 special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts 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 questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer