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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts 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 created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant 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 criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer