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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. 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 keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, 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 most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer