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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle 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 proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready 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 tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal 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 circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist