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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ 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 change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist