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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast 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