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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country 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, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer