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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help 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 additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking 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 causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; 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 after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer