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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the 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 all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument 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 valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist