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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; 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 fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn 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 implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist