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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials 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 power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist