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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide 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 the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer