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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect 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 made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist