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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define 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 initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist