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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making 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 thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist