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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer