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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist