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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer