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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist