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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist