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

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, 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 world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates 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