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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal 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 Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members 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