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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps 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 House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created 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 genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist