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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed 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 seats 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. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, 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 Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer