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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 determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist