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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. 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 has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable 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 attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district 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 representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement 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 become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer