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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

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 upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer