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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels 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, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial 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 shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation 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 likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state 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 fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist