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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology 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 authority, 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 subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist