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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer