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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system 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 first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist