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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle 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, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist