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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once 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 fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle 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