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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer