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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering 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. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer