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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control 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 mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation 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, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; 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 grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer