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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer