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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner 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 influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution 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 crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist