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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, 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 extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance 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 proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer