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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome 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 opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations 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.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer