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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer