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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist