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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 authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire 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 most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist