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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making 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 still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer