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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation 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 emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist