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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal 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 dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, 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 undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer