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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing 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 Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members 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