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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. 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 made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist