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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist