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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as 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 asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist