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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, 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 time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer