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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s 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 also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, 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 address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level 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 necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist