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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: 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 engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able 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 Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist