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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist