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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries 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 years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered 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 able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. 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 Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist