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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist