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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions 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 redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise 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