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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist