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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist