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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation 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 complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution 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