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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, 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 years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power 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 as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 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 embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, 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 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer