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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist