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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument 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 valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow 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 fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer