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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made 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 revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen 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 mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members 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 writer