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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, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear 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 humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making 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 Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer