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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. 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 help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic 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 representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions 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 years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something 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 does not in practice have lawmaking, military 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 the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority 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 power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions 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 columnist