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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force 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