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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern 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 ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave 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 motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good 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 made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. 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 the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist