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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people 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 issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist