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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 power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down 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 appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has 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 Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist