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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer