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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors 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