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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration 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 presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle 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 reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist