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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 authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer