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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire 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 Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won 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, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist