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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ 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 additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy 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 first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors 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