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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist