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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. 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 not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist