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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, 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 procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer