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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer