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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 declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, 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 reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist