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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure 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 valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members 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 stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer